


Back in Eden

by SingleWhiteCatLady



Series: Plotgrenades [4]
Category: Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Cat-Lady does fluff, Dog fic, F/M, Happy Ending, brief mentions of Hurt Comfort, sad animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:17:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6263815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingleWhiteCatLady/pseuds/SingleWhiteCatLady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.” ― Milan Kundera</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back in Eden

0-0-0

 

Furiosa had no idea where the dog had come from originally, only that for the last four-hundred-and-so-days it had been there, and that’s all that mattered. Ellot had been the one who’d seemed to claim the dog. They’d often been seen out on the sands bounding along together, Ellot throwing the worn out sole to an old boot and the dog fetching it back to him, wiggling all over. They ate together, slept together, the dog even had goggles it wore when they went out on patrols.

 

But Ellot had died that morning, the blackthumbs and revheads finding him cold and stiff in his bunk with the dog whining and pawing at his boot.

 

They’d sent him off with full honors. A slug of whiskey and his name written in the big books Capable had taken to keeping.

 

Furiosa hadn’t expected the dog to live a week after Ellot died. Expected someone to catch and eat it, or that it would just eventually starve to death.

 

But it didn’t.

 

It stayed back, hidden under Ellot’s old bunk until the blackthumbs had mourned his days and come to disperse the deadman’s belongings.

 

It wasn’t much, a belt of wrenches and spanners, a metal cup and bowl he’d decorated with flames and skulls and flowers. A pair of boots and two pair of trousers, one with the seat torn out and halfway repaired.

 

The various weapons went back to the Citadel for disbursement to the patrols, and that was everything.

 

Except the dog.

 

A dog that nobody seemed to want.

 

It was an ugly thing. A gold and white mutt that looked part dingo with a crooked tail, one eye and a bald spot on one side where it had been injured and tended to by Ellot.

 

Nobody wanted the dog. The thought of having to share their rations with it, or make sure it didn’t bite anybody, or train it, was too much for the already stretched thin maintenance crews.

 

So the dog just started wandering around.

 

One day it’d be down below with the People, and Furiosa would see it and think, _well, someone’ll eat it before dawn._ But the next day it’d be in one of the gardens hanging back looking forlorn and thinner, or lying despondently in the empty space where Ellot’s work station had been.

 

Sometimes the dog would disappear for days at a time and she’d only know it wasn’t dead when she noticed it curled up in the ever shrinking hole Ellot had left in the garages.

 

She kind of felt sorry for it, every so often tossed a spare bite of bread or protein meal its way. Sometimes it would despondently chew, others it would just sigh and turn away.

 

It came to the point, almost two months after Ellot’s belongings were disbanded, that Furiosa was considering shooting the dog just to put it out of its misery. It wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t try to find a new master. Wouldn’t leave— She tried to encourage the pups to take care of it, but often enough they would pet and fuss over the dog only as long as their attention held, then they’d be back with their noses in engines.

 

Everyone just tried to ignore the dog as best they could. It would either attach itself to someone else, or eventually wander away and join one of the few feral packs that roamed the region.

 

It was too gentle a creature to train as an attack dog, too trusting and lovable to be a trade sniffer… And a dog needed two eyes to be a Sentinel Hound, Citadel only had three of those, and although the mutt might be good to breed one of the Sentinels, they had no idea what the offspring’s temperament would be, or even what gender the mutt was.

 

Just putting the thing down was starting to look like a more acceptable option.

 

The Long Patrol came in that evening, heavy one car. A banged up truck with spotlights on the front and thick mesh for a back wind screen. There was a crate almost as large as the bed of the truck in the back, seemed to be filled with scrap and car parts. Probably a whole car from the look of it, she was sure that twisted bit of rust she could see poking up from the crate was part of a frame.

 

She met the patrol, mostly for curiosity sake, and almost tripped over her feet when she recognized the truck’s driver.

 

Toast was talking to him, elbows on the open window grinning. She noticed Furiosa’s presence first, turned with a broad, sly grin.

 

“Found him out there trying to dig up some wreckage past the canyon. Nearly took off Remmy’s head with that shotgun… He’s lucky ‘was me and Rem that found him. How he was actin’ Packard’ve shot him on sight.”

 

“Remind me to have a talk with Packard,” She turned her eyes to Max and stared at him long and hard. “Finally got thing dug out?”

 

His mouth twitched. Apparently his find hadn’t been as satisfactory, or beneficial as he’d wanted it to be. But, she wondered, what did he expect? It had been buried out there for more than a thousand days, and as curious as she’d known he’d become, swinging through to trade for supplies every hundred-or-so-days; she’d known giving him the truck to go and look for it had been a mistake.

It meant something to him, she’d seen the look in his eyes when he found his old wheel bent and waiting to be chopped and repurposed in a heap the last time he’d come through. She hadn’t been surprised when the wheel went missing, Max probably had stuffed it into one of his bags.

 

“Find anything worth repairing?”

 

He inhaled deeply and looked away; “Just scattered parts.”

 

As she’d known there would be. She’d seen it happen, the crunch and buckle of metal as she’d rammed the car into the wheels of the Gastown Rig. The resultant fireball. She nodded and nothing more was said about it.

 

The crate held more than she’d expected. A few parts of the frame, a door, part of the roll cage, the engine block, it needed cleaned and scoured. Pistons, some wiring, gears, and bolts. “What’re you going to do with all this?”

 

He shrugged, played innocent but she knew better. “If it wasn’t yours originally, and wasn’t already in use, trade only. Food might be a gift here, but engines are hard to come by.”

 

He nodded, hummed in a way that made her think he believed it was fair. Then he made a sudden, startled noise and leapt away from the truck, eyes going wide and down, hand reaching for the gun at his hip—

 

Furiosa saw the dog’s head poking out from under the frame and thought, for an instant, that Max would save her the trouble of putting the poor thing down. But he stopped, stumbled and hopped a bit on his bad leg and stared at the animal with wide eyes, shoulders sagging in something like relief.

 

The dog stared right back at him with its lone dark eye.

 

“’s that a dog?”

 

Furiosa nodded, “Ellot’s.”

 

Max glanced at her then back at the dog, shoulders sagging a little farther. He hummed and once the lift had come back down for him pulled the truck onto the platform and watched the dog shrink away into the twisted little streets between little homes the people had begun building with mud and clay and steel.

 

Over the next few days Furiosa saw Max move his pile of parts into an empty side chamber and begun assembly. Often times he’d have to hunt down a more experienced black-thumb to straighten this piece, or help him locate that one.

 

Usually it was the same young man.

 

Polt was nearing his seven-thousandth day, short and built like a V8. Furiosa had seen him lift an engine on his own. Polt was completely deaf in one ear and had had a large lump on the back of his shoulder, where his neck met his body. In a world of lumps he’d assumed it to be like those of his kin, but after the Returning, when the blood shed had been revived into the Wards he’d been one of the first in line to see if his lumps could be removed.

 

“It’s not a cancer at all,” Triumph had said, “’s a cyst!”

 

“Wot’sat?”

 

“Like a big pimple!”

 

A crowd of War Boys had assembled to witness the operation, Polt lying on his face across the cutting table gassed out with nitrous while the cyst had been removed.

 

Four of the twenty War Boys who’d been left at the Citadel found their lumps to be cysts, their sicknesses and nightfevers tapering off. One by one, non-cyst lumps began to shrink. Rumors spread that the Immortan had poisoned them and in less than a month the white painted faces were gone, replaced by wide eyed pale boys mourning their lost brothers.

 

It was Polt, really, and a few others, who made the change. Skirting the edges of rooms where the Citadel’s former Milkers had taken refuge. Listening to raised voices as the mothers and former wives spoke.

 

In less than another month Polt could be seen almost constantly in the presence of one particular mother, a tall beautifully rotund woman who’d renamed herself Constant. Not long after that Constant came out of her seat at a meeting of the Sisters and Brothers and asked how one went about claiming a person, since old Joe was gone, as she’d claimed Polt for herself and wanted to make sure no one else was going to flip their legs at him.

 

The Brothers, the surviving older War Boys had laughed and knocked their elbows at Polt who’d sneered and threatened to skin them.

 

Furiosa overheard Polt loudly regaling Max of the tale over the sound of their searching for parts.

 

“She’s quite a woman! All soft and round and brown like rich earth, can pick me up like a pup!”

 

Max made a sound like a backfire and Furiosa wondered if she’d ever heard a laugh like that before. Ever heard him laugh full stop.

 

There had been giggles before, soft chuckling noises when someone told a particularly amusing tale, but never such a loud burst of it.

 

“You ever have a woman claim you?”

 

Max had hummed, quiet, “Once… A long time ago.”

 

“Pups?”

 

Silence, Max’s mouth hardened.

 

“Ah…” Polt made a gesture, a fist knocked against his chest—Furiosa had seen Triumph make that same motion, remembered it from years past—Appology.

 

Max tilted his head at the sign, hands twitching a little, but he said nothing.

 

“Oi—look there!” Polt flipped a finger toward the far end of the room where the cave mouth opened up into the outside world.

 

Max turned and squinted, seemed to stiffen a little uncertainly.

 

There was Ellot’s dog wandering in. It paused near Max’s foot and pawed at him, dropped something at his feet and nudged it over with the scarred end of its snout.

 

“Wot’sit?”

 

Max nudged it with the toe of his boot and crouched on protesting joints to pick it up.

 

The dog’s crooked tail thumped.

 

“Ah, ‘s an old boot!” Polt said, “Rubber pile’s over there, we’re skint for it.”

 

Max tossed the bit of sole toward the pile of scrap rubber and the dog loped after it—brought it back. Max threw it back onto the pile, took the bit of pipe and the carburetor Polt shoved in his direction and when the dog brought the scrap of rubber back Max just stared at it. Stared at the dog.

 

“Aw,” Polt scurried down the pile of car parts and flapped his hands at the dog, “STEP OFF! GET GONE!”

 

The dog tucked its tail and darted away, lone eye wide and frightened as Polt threw a bent fitting after it.

 

Max bent and picked up the scrap of rubber aimed his arm toward the pile but stopped, stared at the chewed end for a moment, then after the dog’s retreating backside.

 

He stuck the rubber into his pocket.

 

0-0-0

 

A week passed, Max was in the garages when Furiosa and Toast returned from their Long Patrol.

 

Max had a rolling chassis in his section of the steel works. It was different, similar in shape to the car that had almost killed them all. But different.

 

Polt was spot-welding a piece of steel in place while Max held it still, face ducked behind the leather of his jacket’s lapel.

 

“There!” Polt said lifting his visor, “I’ll finish this up for you, but then you’re on your own!”

 

Max grunted and stepped back, dusted his hands together. And nearly tripped over the dog as it appeared from seemingly nowhere.

 

Furiosa almost laughed, would have if Max hadn’t snarled at the dog, startled, and scared it away with its tail between its legs.

 

He watched after it as it ran, shoulders slumped.

 

Max left the next day, was gone for maybe three days and came back with more salvaged parts and his left eye swollen shut, already bruising.

 

Most of the parts were from the carrier rig and its haul of vehicles, overturned by Buzzards and buried in a sandstorm. Furiosa had thought most of the vehicles on the carrier lost to the Buzzards, but there had been enough—or Max was somehow able to barter or steal from them and escape with only a blackened eye.

 

Polt thought it was hilarious. Said he looked like that mangy mutt running around, and loaned out his tools as Max began to assemble his cleaned and repaired engine.

 

He worked and fought for three days on the rebuild trying to just get the engine running at least, but the part he needed, some gear or pulley—Furiosa hadn’t asked, it was his project and none of her business—and the scrap heap was sadly lacking.

 

He was gone for two weeks, she and Toast and their crew found him broken down west of the bullet farm. It looked like he’d been there a few days, had hollowed out a place to hide himself between two rocks, close enough to his truck that he could defend it from scavengers, but far enough away that if he knew he had no chance of fighting them off, they wouldn’t find him. He’d become familiar enough with the banners of Citadel that when he saw them on the horizon he came out of his hiding spot and flagged the rig down, seemed almost relieved that it was Furiosa behind the wheel.

 

His transmission had blown and he was down to his last two days of skimpy rations.

 

“Next time, you take a flare gun,” Furiosa scolded as she and the crew had got the truck hitched to the back of the rig.

 

He grunted, seemed despondent and almost humiliated, warily eyed the boys as he climbed into the rig.

 

He got the engine of his car started the next day, grinned like an idiot with his nose crinkled up, practically bouncing. Insisted on having the chassis lowered to the desert floor and made three mad loops around the plateaus with his scarf over his face and welding goggles on to protect his eyes from the dust. After that things started falling into place quickly, and all the while, every time Furiosa peered into his little work bay, she saw Max working and not far away the dog was lurking, curled in on itself with a sad look on its scarred face. Sometimes she would catch Max sitting on a creeper eating and eyeing the animal… sometimes she would see him toss the dog a bit of bread or dried meat or a chunk of whatever desert creature he’d managed to snare in the traps some pups made and traded for. As far as Furiosa knew, Max had bought every single one of them. Traded some trinket or another he’d made or found; a stone with a hole in it tied onto a bit of string, pieces of colored glass worn smooth and milky by the sand wrapped in scraps of wire to make jewelry. Strange stones that held prints of plant life, fire starter lenses made from the butt ends of broken bottles.

 

Occassionally, when she was being particularly cautious, in the dead of the night, Furiosa would creep down to see why Max hadn’t appeared at her door and she found him sitting on a stack of tires with the dog in front of him, just softly stroking a hand over its head, or scratching behind one scarred ear.

 

Even more rare, she’d find him lying on a makeshift pallet in the corner of his work bay fast asleep with the dog beside him, head on his shin.

 

It was the morning after one such night that Furiosa came down early to make sure no pup was unfortunate enough to be the one to wake him and likely be struck when Max came awake swinging. She found Max awake already, fighting with the sheet metal he’d salvaged to bend and mold to his desired image of the car. The metal sheet had been slightly warped during the cutting process. Either by heat or the strain of the rest of the metal pulling and twisting as it was cut away.

 

He was huffing and puffing, sweat on his brow, sleeves rolled up, muscles bulging as he tried to work the clamp far enough down on the sheet to pin it in place long enough to be spot welded and beaten back into shape. He glanced up at her in acknowledgement and bent back over his work.

 

“Want a hand?”

 

He shook his head, lips pulled back as he pushed against the clamp with one hand and the metal with the other. His arms shook, sweat beaded on his brow—

 

He slipped. The clamp dropped with a resounding metal on stone CLANG and she heard him breathe out hard.

 

His hands disappeared but the strained look on his face remained. Eyes distant. He turned away and she knew.

 

“Max—“ She moved forward urgently, caught his elbow and all she saw was red. Red spilling across his palm and dripping off his fingers.

 

He had his left hand clamped around his right wrist in an attempt to stem the flow, but it wasn’t helping much.

 

“Let me see it,” She caught his arm, below his gripping fingers, and dragged him over to the lamp, teeth grit, heart in her neck.

 

The fleshy part below the joint of his thumb was split, a deep curving line slanting outward from the center of his palm. She could see the thin yellow slip of fat between his skin and muscle and knew immediately that it was serious. “Up, keep it up!” She shoved his arm above his head and her eyes flicked frantically around the room for something to hold to the wound, but all the cloth she saw was stained with oil or dirt or brake fluid.

 

“C’mon,” She pulled, had to practically drag him out of the room.

 

The first blackthumbs were filtering in, a couple of pups as well.

 

“Oh sparks!” A revhead shrieked seeing the blood, he darted off down the hallway in search of help in the Wards. The Mercy Mothers would likely still be asleep, but the boy would have them awake soon enough.

 

“Are you dizzy?” Furiosa said when Max’s steps faltered. “Do you need to sit?”

 

Max shook his head, though his mouth was pale, “Dog—the dog.”

 

“What about the dog?”

 

“Look!” Max’s head tilted down and when Furiosa’s gaze followed it, sure enough, there was the dog pawing at Max’s leg with a pink box hanging from a strap in its mouth.

 

It was ancient, scuffed and cracked and held together in places by bits of wire like stitches and there was a picture on it—scratched and damaged and faded though it was, of a girl with yellow hair in a blue dress. Someone had taken the time to draw intricate tattoos and markings on her exposed arms, chest, and throat, but took care not to mar her face.

 

“Go! GET!” Furiosa shook her foot at the dog, but it was insistent, danced around her and came back, whining and pawing at Max’s leg.

 

And Max released his wrist and took the box with his bloody hand.

 

Furiosa snarled, was tempted to clamp her metal fingers around his arm to staunch the bloodflow, but Max popped the box open and Furiosa almost cried out in shock at what was inside.

 

Bandages. Gauze pads, sharp pristine scissors.

 

Max was already pulling out gauze pressing wads of it against his bleeding palm, eyes flicking between his hand and the dog.

 

Triumph wasn’t impressed with being woken, but she tolerated it, grumbled bitterly as she cleaned the wound with spirits, merciless as Max bit a hole in a rag he’d stuffed between his teeth.

 

“Give him some of the gas, no sense on biting holes in perfectly good cloth!”

 

He didn’t want it at first, seemed more upset by the fact Furiosa was trying to force the mask over his face, than by the pain, but he relented when Triumph started picking metal shavings out of the wound. Seemed to fade out after a couple breaths while Triumph stitched the wound closed and bound his hand. Sat there with his head and shoulders leaned across the table, eyes distant while his body remained utterly limp and seemingly unresponsive.

 

Furiosa thought he was unconscious at first, but when she laid her hand on his shoulder he snarled and snapped his teeth at her weakly.

 

“No, just leave him—It’s fine,” Triumph tied bandages around his hand and wrist and patted his brow with a wet cloth. “Just give him a moment, it’s the gas,” She patted his face dry, “Can you hear me, boy?”

 

He blinked slowly, made no sound.

 

“We’ll just put you on a bed until that gas wears off. A little rest so you don’t get shocky, then you’re free to go.”

 

His legs twitched, as if trying to make himself stand, but the upper half of his body didn’t move and he nearly slid into the floor off the stool.

 

Triumph made a low tutting sound in her chest and patted his head, “There now, Furiosa’s going to help you up.”

 

Furiosa put her hand cautiously on his shoulder again, afraid of what he may do, or that he might hurt himself. He flinched but didn’t snap at her. His legs were weak, but they moved, shuffled forward and she eased him onto one of the low pallets in the corner of the room, propped his hand up on a pillow on his chest.

 

“He’ll be fine,” Triumph moved forward and settled herself on a chair by the bed, folded a cool cloth across his brow and tugged a thin blanket over his upper half. “I’ll keep an eye on him. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or two until he’ll be climbing the walls.”

 

Furiosa nodded, took a moment to just look at him sprawled there with his mouth hanging open, dull and numbed. Shook herself because seeing all the blood had been a bit more jarring than she’d wanted to admit, especially when she hadn’t been prepared for it.

 

Max woke without incident a few hours later, appeared in Furiosa’s doorway while she was cleaning sand from her prosthetic. He looked more annoyed by the state of his hand than anything, she wondered if Triumph had given a few swallows of spirits for the pain.

 

He wasn’t happy. Even less so when Furiosa followed him back down to his car later that evening and he saw the dried blood all over the sheet metal and the floor. It was bad enough it had stained his shirt, but how he had to sand down the metal again so it didn’t start rusting—and he couldn’t even do that because of his hand.

 

He took a hammer to the metal, forced it into shape and watched Furiosa spot weld the sheet into place. Pouted like a child and begrudgingly accepted her help with the wiring and the reinforcement.

 

A sand storm blew through the next afternoon, everyone crowding into the lower levels, children huddled around parents and Mothers, soft singing starting in the back corner where Triumph and the Mercy Mothers were keeping the elderly and sick supplied with oxygen.

 

Max sat with Furiosa against one of the doors to keep it closed, face and eyes covered, wounded hand hidden under his jacket and shirt.

 

It wasn’t often a storm blew so hard around the Citadel, the mountains and rocks around them usually broke up the storms, but every so often one would blow in just the right direction and everything would shut down. It would take days of digging to get the plants on the terraces cleaned off, and they could lose so many crops.

 

All the cars and engines would have to be cleaned and it could be upwards of ten days before everything was back to normal.

 

Max sat there quietly, scanning the crush of bodies with a nervous tension in his shoulders. He didn’t see the dog anywhere. Was it still out there? Would it survive? Would they find it’s poor sandblasted corpse in a corner somewhere, choked to death by grit?

 

Max had seen people die like that, could remember the sting of sand against his skin, the gobs of muddy mucus he’d coughed up for days afterward. How raw his skin and eyes had felt. He’d been lucky really, not to have succumbed to the silt in his lungs, many before him and after him had and would.

 

He scolded himself, tried to force the concern he had for a dog out of his mind.

 

The dog wasn’t his, it was Ellot’s. Ellot’s responsibility—Ellot who Max wanted to introduce to his fist for letting the poor animal roam around and starve. The animal seemed touch starved, pressing hard into Max’s shins when he was bent under the hood, or appearing with a wrench, or mallet, or cutter at random, taken from some blackthumb’s workbench, or hidden niche. Max thought briefly of the box full of medical supplies. He’d never seen it before, Triumph and the Mercies had never seen it before—didn’t know where it had come from. It was like the dog had his own little medical ward somewhere, hidden in the passageways with the pipes where Max had seen him hiding.

 

He remembered vaguely, like a dream or a conjured image from some other person’s tale, house calls and doctors with big black bags. He snorted, the sound lost amid the scream and howl of the storm.

 

A mutated hare with big feet and expressive eyes winking on a picture box. Shows…

 

_What’s up Doc!_

 

The storm lasted for almost an hour, it took the better part of the rest of the day to dig out the hallways to the exit and kitchens. Most of the night to get the passage cleared to the Wards.

 

The garages were inundated, but the doors had been shut over the individual work bays and Max’s car and engine were only lightly dusted.

 

The pump rooms had been shut off, so the water still flowed, helped to clear the eyes and throats of the People as they exited the towers to dig out their homes.

 

Furiosa saw Max briefly over the next seven days, once or twice on the terraces helping sweep the sand off the plants, in the kitchens scarfing down his ration of food with his shoulders and arms hunched protectively over his plate, eyes wary and defensive if anyone got too close.

 

Everyone helped, everyone worked, children dug sand away from the air vents and carried jugs of water around for the adults working to clear the greens, they uncovered the doors to the goat houses and made sure their few animals were OK.

 

It took three days to clear the terraces, three more in each tower to clean out the rooms, and by the fourteenth day everything was back to normal.

 

Max’s hand had healed, the scar was thick and red, because stubborn as he was, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from using it. The skin was tender and Triumph told him to keep the area padded and under a glove for a while longer. “Don’t want it rippin’ open when you’re working.”

 

And work he did. Furiosa had never seen him so determined, he spent every waking moment, and hours he should have been asleep, toiling over that car.

 

She could feel the restlessness in him from across the room as she worked on her rig, could hear him growling and snarling in the evenings when all the blackthumbs were taking their turn in the kitchens.

 

Sometimes he got frustrated, when something didn’t fit, or didn’t bend or work the way he’d wanted it to and he would slam things around, others he would sulk quiet and dangerous in the corners while he ate, back to the walls eyes wild and dark under his lashes.

 

She left him alone on the evening of his twenty-fifth day, because the mumbling and snarling had reached a violent pitch and he’d started… started talking as if there were someone there to listen. Snapped his teeth at nothing and seemed to writhe under his skin as if constantly brushed by clammy fingers.

 

She slept with a knife under her pillow, not because she was afraid he would hurt her, but afraid that there was something she couldn’t see—something perhaps he could, like Triumph muttered about Second Sight, demons and spirits that plagued those who could see them and tortured those who could not.

 

The next morning he was different. Eyes bloodshot and puffy, cheeks pale, nose red. He shuffled as if all his joints were sore, all his muscles torn. He hunched over his soup, kept the mug pinned between both his hands, fingers curled as if lost to rigors, cramped forever in the process of pulling a wrench or wielding a mallet.

 

He fell asleep with his face bowed into his arms right there at the table in the kitchens, barely even flinched when Furiosa passed her fingers through his hair.

 

She contemplated leaving him like that, but convinced herself to suggest he sleep in a more comfortable place.

 

He wouldn’t go to her room, but he took the blanket she offered, cocooned himself in it and huddled in the reinforced floorboard of his car.

 

She shut the doors to his work bay when she found him, left the lamp burning under the hood, spreading anemic light throughout the chamber. He slept for the better part of a whole day, and when she checked on him she found he wasn’t alone.

 

The dog was wedged into the curl of his hip, head resting on Max’s ribs, the man’s arm thrown over its thin, dirty body.

 

It looked up, single eye watery and caked at the edges with silt, licked tiredly at its lips and settled down again.

 

She didn’t mention it. Though she couldn’t discern why.

 

Two days later Max went out with Polt in the Blackthumb’s dune runner. Trading, Polt had said. Furiosa had a feeling they were going back to the wreck of the car carrier Max had found, hoping for more salvage.

 

His car was almost done, though she hadn’t taken the time to LOOK at it in half a month. She took a moment to do it while he and Polt were gone. Felt that old thrill of secrecy rush up her spine.

 

Everything was still exposed steel at the moment, the doors were still not attached, though they were leaned carefully in the corner, glass replaced by steel sheets with a slit for sight lines and the muzzle of a gun.

 

It was not by any means what his old car had been, though it held a similar shape. Left hand driver with a manual transmission and reinforced doors. This car was larger, wider. Held a mean upward tilt of its back end, and a scoop on the front like the War Rig had, and a sliding roof hatch. It was longer as well, with room and access for a large fuel tank and a tank for water, or so she assumed.

 

The dashboard was still open, ready for the gauge panel leaned up into the corner by the doors.

 

All it lacked was an acceptable seat.

 

She saw the dog before it saw her, which she supposed was more a testament to its missing eye than any prowess she had at sneaking up on dogs.

 

It was lying sprawled out under the work bench on Max’s bed roll, gnawing on a scrap of rubber that looked to once have been the sole of a boot. It turned its head and noticed her, flinched violently and scrambled up, made for the pipeworks in the corner and squeezed itself into the little hole around them, disappearing from sight.

 

It took Furiosa a long moment to realize, and remember that this had been Ellot’s old bay and she wondered, absently, if she shouldn’t have a pup crawl back into that hole and see if they could scare the dog out.

 

It had to bother Max, make him nervous knowing there was something alive hiding back there. Something hungry that could come out and rip into his throat when he was trying to sleep—Then again, she remembered spotting the dog cuddled up to him like a bed warmer and she wondered…

 

Had Max claimed the dog? If so, why hadn’t he brought it to the kitchens for food? Why hadn’t he mentioned it? Or brought it along into the cavern when the sandstorm came through?

 

Maybe he didn’t even know the dog was there!

 

He and Polt came back the next evening, sure enough, packing salvage from the wrecked carrier. Seats and a glass windscreen that was miraculously unbroken.

 

That night Furiosa came down from her room to confront him about the dog and heard him mumbling. Her first instinct was to worry, fear that he’d slipped back into that dark place he’d fallen into days before, snarling and throwing things at specters only he could see. But this was different. He was talking, but not to himself, when he did that his voice was always pitched in distress, this was low, curious words.

 

“Wrench.”

 

A moment of silence and something metallic scraped against the floor.

 

“Cutter.”

 

Something clanked softly.

 

“Screwdriver,” After a moment Max hummed, amused. “What else do you know, Doc?”

 

She peeked around the door and found him sitting on the creeper in his shirt sleeves with an array of tools around him, that mangy dog in front of him with its tongue lolling out as Max scratched it behind the ear. He seemed withdrawn, as if his interaction with the dog was private—secret.

 

Furiosa crept back across the work bay and pretended she hadn’t seen, called out to him as she made her second approach.

 

The dog was nowhere to be seen when she got into the room.

 

They worked in silence for most of the night, every so often Furiosa scanned the edges of the room, looking for evidence of the dog, but found none. The front glass went in, only a little bit of adjusting needed to be made to make sure it fit. Sealed with melted rubber and strips of metal bolted down around its edges.

 

The seats—two of them, went in, followed by a massive tank for fuel, and a second smaller one for water. Welded down with a sheet of metal on a hinge on top to prevent thieves. A thick metal mesh over the back window slit, no glass to fit it at the moment.

 

“Are you going to paint it?” Furiosa dusted her hand against her thigh, flexed her mechanical hand, eager for something to do.

 

“Have paint?”

 

She nodded, “Not a wide variety of colors, but we have some. It dries out, so they take any chance they have to use it,” She lead him to a back shop in the main cavern and turns on a greenish light, lets him peruse the shelves of paint. “Marl’s the only one who knows how to lay it down, so you’ll have to be sweet to him or try it yourself.”

 

Max grunted, picked up a container and tilted it in his hand to check its consistency. Plucked up another and sat them down.

 

“Furiosa?”

 

She turned toward him with her eyebrows up.

 

He glanced at her and away, picked up another container and tilted it, “Doc’s sick.”

 

“Doc?” She narrowed her eyes; “Who’s Doc?”

 

Max shifted uncomfortably, face going slightly pink under his tan; “The dog… Brought us medical supplies… Nobody called it a name, so—Doc.”

 

Furiosa snorted.

 

“Why’s Ellot letting it wander if it knows tools?”

 

Furiosa blinked, confused. “Because Ellot died about three and a half months ago.”

 

Max’s face scrunched, she didn’t know if it was because she was pulling the bandage too tight or some reaction to learning the dog had no person.

 

“Nobody wants the responsibility of taking care of it, but nobody has the heart to put it down…” She shrugged, felt strangely guilty; “We’ve just been waiting for someone to eat it honestly.”

 

Max’s hands tightened on the container of paint. His jaws clenched, she saw the muscles in his face and neck twitch. “’s smart dog…”

 

“I don’t think anybody knew that it knew tools, maybe someone’ll take it over when they find out.”

 

He hummed, seemed to retreat into himself a little, and tapped the shelf in front of the black paint, said nothing more.

 

0-0-0

 

The next morning Marl had Max’s car in his painting booth and Max was leaning against a wall watching some Blackthumbs try to ply the dog with tools.

 

The dog just sat there, hunched in the corner with its lone watery eye and crooked tail tucked and pretended not to know what they were talking about. He watched them try to get the dog to chase and fetch knotted rags, or scraps of leather and rubber, but the dog just ignored them.

 

Eventually they got bored of trying to make it amuse them and dissipated, filtered back to their work or their pleasures and Max shuffled back into his work bay. It seemed strange and wrong to be empty, too big and yet too small. He dropped to sit on a box of tools by the niche with the pipes and peered in, clicked on a torch and tried to find the dog’s hiding place.

 

The niche was deeper than he’d anticipated. Went back farther than the length of his arm, but when he shuffled forward and crouched to stare in he saw the dog huddled back against the piping—amid a tangle of old dirty rags and strange bits of things, a torn scarf, a set of goggles with only one lens, the other a piece of metal, a tattered book with a busty woman swooning on the cover, a small, tattered stuffed animal—it may at one time been something recognizable, but time and wear had morphed it into something vaguely round with ambiguous limbs and tail and black button eyes.

 

Max stared at the dog for a long time, watched it shivering and felt something tight and cold like acid raise in his gut.

 

No.

 

No, don’t do it.

 

It’s just an animal.

 

It doesn’t have feelings, it can’t mourn—

 

It—Don’t do this. Don’t do it!

 

It’s not your responsibility!

 

He’s not your responsibility!

 

Max sighed and rubbed his brow with his scarred knuckles, pulled himself away from the niche, out of the bay and turned the light off behind himself.

 

It took about two days for all the paint to dry.

 

In all that time Max didn’t step foot back into the garages. He worked manically in the gardens. Traded labor for rations and supplies. Furiosa could feel that restlessness building in him again. Heard it in every uncomfortable shift of his body against the pallet in her room. He tossed and turned and mumbled as he fought for sleep. Woke up with a fist cocked back and sweat on his face. Chest heaving.

 

It wasn’t the first time he woken ready to fight. Usually she could calm him with her words, or a hand on his chest when he turned to her, others he rolled to his feet and left the room and she would find him slumped in one of the lookout nests at the top of the tower with his shotgun resting across his knees, eyes bloodshot and his jacket collar popped up around his ears and the back of his neck.

 

This time was no different. By the third time that second night he gave up, disappeared still tugging on his jacket against the chill of the night.

 

The next morning when she went looking for him, he was already at work, this time down on the sands arguing in a strange language with some traders come through looking for water. Translating, or so it looked, for Cheedo and Ezza.

 

Furiosa had never seen him speak so fast or so much, and she stood off to the side to watch with a small group of People.

 

The traders made expansive hand gestures, Max’s were prominent on a regular basis, now they seemed to have structure.

 

The man he’s arguing with thrusts his hand toward Cheedo with a sneer and Max pushes his shoulders back, eyes wide and motions to Cheedo with the flat of his hand, voice slow and carefully urgent.

 

Cheedo rolls her lips back from her teeth—

 

The man’s eyes widen fearfully and he folds his hands together under his chin. After a moment of deliberation he nods in agreement and holds out his hand to Capable to accept whatever deal they’d made.

 

Max looks inordinately pleased with himself for hours afterward. Until Furiosa corners him near one of the irrigation trenches and asks pointedly what he’d told the man.

 

He blushed, grinned, and focused on scooping sand out of the trench; “’said that Cheedo wasn’t called ‘Fearless’ for nothing… may have mentioned that th’last man to wrong her had half his face ripped off.”

 

Furiosa stared at him, kicked sand into the trench in front of him.

 

Max scooped it out—She kicked more back in.

 

He looked up at her, hands on his knees, lips parted half in exasperation, half amusement and shook his head, held up a hand so she could help drag him out of the trench and followed him inside.

 

That evening the car was deemed dry enough by Marl to start packing. Furiosa helped, Cheedo, Capable, Dag, and Toast tried to, brought him special treats or a blanket, something special, and fussed over the car.

 

He’d tried to make it as much like the Interceptor as he could, used as many parts as were salvageable, but it was different. Same wheel, same air scoop, some of the same gauges and he’d even managed to find a few of his collected odds and ends. But, he’d had to realize, had to accept that there would be no going back to what once was.

 

And with that realization he’d decided to make some changes. He’d decided—against his better judgement, against his instinct—to stretch out a thin tendril of hope.

 

He’d put in a passenger seat again. Hidden nooks and niches for weapons reached from both sides of the car.

 

There was room for his bedroll in the back… He told himself at first that it was for more supplies. But at the same time his mind strayed elsewhere.

 

He didn’t sleep.

 

He tossed and turned and sat against the wall with his arms folded over his knees staring at Furiosa’s small window.

 

“Are you OK?”

 

He glanced at her, then back to the window, grunted wordlessly.

 

“You don’t have to wait until morning if you need to go… I won’t be upset, and the girls will understand.”

 

He rubbed his face, the back of his neck, scratched his nails roughly over his scalp.

 

“It’s OK, Max.”

 

He exhales loudly and pushes to his feet, limps over and starts pulling on his clothing, straps on his knee brace, watches Furiosa drag on her trousers and shrug a blanket over her shoulders and chest wrappings.

 

Their shoulders bump gently on their way down to the garages. His car is already on the lift, ready to lower.

 

The night shift wheel walkers are sitting around listening to one of their elders tell a story. They look up when Furiosa enters and scurry to their places. Clip on their harnesses to the security line above their heads and shuffle into position. Lower the car to the ground and wait for the signal from their elder to start working it up again.

 

Furiosa stands there in the dark, sees Max moving in the scant moonlight as he shifts his weight on his feet, finally reaches for her hand in an attempt to reassure himself she truly is OK with his leaving early.

 

She bows her brow into his; “Go on… Just don’t forget to come back, OK?”

 

He nods, exhales in relief and touches the back of her head with his scarred left hand. After a moment he turns, reaches for the door handle and pulls it open—and freezes.

 

“Aw…” His shoulders sag.

 

Furiosa leans over and peers into the car, sees a vague tan shape in the foot well under the wheel.

 

Max clears his throat and points to the ground, snaps his fingers.

 

The dog whines.

 

He snaps and points again, “Out.”

 

Furiosa looks between the dog and Max, sees the crease between Max’s brows—the discomfort… The sadness.

 

“Out!”

 

The dog shifts and tries to hide under the seat.

 

Max makes an unusual noise, half pained and half mournful, reaches in and catches the dog around the chest, hauls it out and tries to push it away from the car, even as it resists—Leans into him with its tail thumping, lone eye watery and sad.

 

Max stops, drops to sit in the open door and bows his head against the dog’s, hands curled into its shaggy fur.

 

Furiosa’s heart aches; “Take him.”

 

Max’s head lifts, eyes shining and wide in something like fear.

 

She pulls her blanket tighter around her shoulders. “He’s practically claimed you as it is… He’ll mourn himself to death or be eaten if someone doesn’t take him.”

 

Max’s mouth opens and closes in protest, “I… What if—“

 

“A few weeks with someone who cares is better than a lifetime the way he’s been living.”

 

The dog shifts closer, nuzzles its head against his chest, makes a low growling sound and wags its tail.

 

Max doesn’t look away from Furiosa, stares at her in disbelief.

 

“Take him.”

 

Max turns, meets the dog’s eyes and his hands shake. Stroke slowly over its scarred head behind ears, against its neck.

 

It’s hard to tell in the dim light, golden from the distant lamps above, blue and silver from the crescent moon—But Furiosa thinks there may be wetness on Max’s cheeks. He looks at her and something passes between them. Something otherworldly and she feels her eyes prickle.

 

He shifts forward onto his crackling knees and gets on the dog’s level, voice pitched low, barely a shivery whisper. “Hey—Hey!” His lips quiver and curl up into a grin. “Hey, Doc.”

 

The dog laps his cheek and chin—

 

And Max laughs, throws his arms around its neck and the dog wiggles excitedly, licks and drools on his ear and collar.

 

The next thing Furiosa knows the dog is darting away and Max is struggling to his feet, face split in a broad grin. He chases the dog—Doc. Pulls back his am and throws the tattered remains of a boot sole as hard as he can and the dog launches forward after it, comes bounding back prancing excitedly, refuses to let go when Max reaches for it. They growl and snarl and wrestle across the sand like animals and Furiosa watches entranced, feels something warm and bright come to life in her chest. She's never seen Max so at ease, so... peaceful. 

 

When Max leaves, two days later he makes sure the dog is wearing the goggles he’d fished from its hiding place beneath the pipes, and has a bag all his own filled with the odds and ends from his nest.

 

Furiosa catches Max before he slides behind the wheel and tugs at the scarf hanging around his neck, pulls it up over his face as he leans into her embrace. She turns her eyes to Doc in the passenger seat; “You take care of him, OK?”

 

The dog lifts its chin and props a paw on the window ledge in agreement.

 

"And you!" She pulls the scarf back down and glares at him; "Take care of yourself."

 

Max nods, chuckles at the dog as he ducks into the car and starts the engine, he meets her eyes one last time and smiles. She smiles back, and lifts a hand as the car pulls away.

 

Furiosa had no idea where the dog had come from originally, just as she had no idea where Max had come from. They were scarred, frightened, and broken. But in the end they’d found one another. They'd found peace, and that’s all that mattered. 

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 


End file.
